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Stories:Watching The Empire Strikes Back On The Side Of A Warehouse
Author: Charles Dickson (C3PO) I've always wondered what particular incident turned Vygis onto the idea of getting his projector. I got wind of it a short time after the idea came to him; while he was doing research to get exactly the model that he wanted. He finally decided on one that was a pretty modern unit, with tons of different inputs, a pretty small size, lots of power and a reputed long bulb life. His plan was to integrate it into all the electronics he had already added to the gold Honda, in such a way that he could open the sunroof and just set the projector on his car roof, and watch anything he wanted anywhere from the comfort of his car. He had a philosophy that the car seat, as a consequence of actual engineering by auto makers, was the most comfortable type of seating to be found, and would take any opportunity to combine unrelated activities with being in his car. The projector idea was clearly genius, particularly from the point of view of his western trips. As I had always had a dream of projecting my own movies onto a drive in theater screen, I continue to this day to believe that the West is littered with abandoned drive-in theaters just waiting for somebody like Vygis to drive by and briefly take over. Vygis did use his projector occasionally on his Summer Tours, but never actually encountered an abandoned drive-in theater. One night in the middle 2000's, after one of his tours, he wanted to get me to go out driving around town with him, and I wanted to see a movie projected onto the side of something big, so he agreed to give it a try. The problem was finding a place in our built-up suburban area that would be big enough to project a movie onto but which our presence at would not attract too much attention. After hunting around a while, we found what seemed like a sure bet, an industrial park with a big white building way in the back. Vygis was skeptical that we'd be able to pull it off, but he nonetheless parked in front of a giant windowless wall and set up the projector. For some reason, the only movie he had worth watching was Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back, but since this was one of the greatest movies of all time, there was no problem. And it was glorious; the wall was just a measly two stories tall but it was probably the biggest screen I'd watched a movie on in decades. Vygis' overpowered car sound system bombarded us with sub-woofed audio from the soundtrack. The car seats were luxuriously comfortable. Sadly, the location was not as secluded as we had hoped; right after the Hoth scenes a security guard in a tiny car with a little orange light on top pulled up and got out to tell us it was private property. We knew well enough not to argue that we were only bouncing photons off a wall, but the "I can't believe I'm having this conversation" look on his face more than made up for the inconvenience of having to move along, even though we never found another good spot that night to finish the movie up. To Vygis and myself there was nothing more satisfying than dealing out pure and indescribable confusion; there was no doubt that the guard would be retelling the story over the next week. In retrospect we probably could have tried to offer him a beer or something and see if he wanted to watch too. Category:Stories Category:Mythologies:The Projector Category:Author:Charles Dickson